tured in an affair
between the brig and a French privateer. A sailor who was either killed
in the fight or taken prisoner, was beyond doubt his father. The
captain of the English brig, not knowing what to do with him, gave him
to Arellanos--who chanced to be in Guaymas at the time--and Arellanos
brought him up and has made a man of him--my faith! that he has. Young
as the fellow is, there is not such a _rastreador_ nor horse-tamer in
the province."

The Spaniard, while apparently not listening to Cuchillo, did not lose a
word of what he was saying; but whether he had heard enough, or that the
subject was a painful one, he suddenly interrupted the gambusino:

"And don't you think, if this wonderful tracker and horse-breaker has
been told the secret of his adopted father he might not be a dangerous
rival to us?"

Cuchillo drew himself up proudly, and replied:--

"I know a man who will yield in nothing--neither at following a trail,
nor taming a wild horse--to Tiburcio Arellanos; and yet this secret has
been almost worthless in his keeping, since he has just sold it for the
tenth part of its value!"

This last argument of Cuchillo's was sufficiently strong to convince Don
Estevan that the Golden Valley was so guarded by these fierce Indians
that nothing but a strong party could reach it--in short, that he
himself was the only man who could set this force afoot. For a while he
remained in his silent reverie. The revelations of Cuchillo in regard
to the adopted son of Marcos Arellanos had opened his mind to a new set
of ideas which absorbed all others. For certain motives, which we
cannot here explain, he was seeking to divine whether this Tiburcio
Arellanos was not the young Fabian de Mediana!

Cuchillo on his part was reflecting on certain antecedents relative to
the gambusino Arellanos and his adopted son; but for powerful reasons he
did not mention his reflections to Don Estevan. There are reasons,
however, why the reader should now be informed of their nature.

The outlaw, as we have said, frequently changed his name. It was by one
of these aliases used up so quickly, that he had been passing, when at
the Presidio Tubac he made the acquaintance of the unfortunate
Arellanos. When the latter was about starting out on his second and
fatal journey--before parting with his wife and the young man whom he
loved as well as if he had been his own son--he confided to his wife the
object of his new expedition; and